Current efforts in bringing instruments on-line via the World Wide Web (WWW) have done much to enhance distance learning and research. We have achieved success in bringing the Scanning Probe Microscope (SPM) data live on the Web. This work is being pursued under the aegis of the project. The project is targeted at bringing SPM data live to community colleges, high schools and other research labs/classrooms. We have further advanced the capabilities by providing remote operation of the SPM via

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... e Web. The remote operator can control many functions of the microscope with reasonable security and ease. The latter marks a milestone in that we have used the Web for truly interactive bidirectional communication involving feedback and control of an instrument. The architecture also incorporates an interactive chat channel among the observers and the operator(s). Further, since the SPM data is inherently 3-Dimensional, a plug-in has been developed to display the live data as a 3-Dimensional model, with support for zoom, pan, rotation, etc. We report our efforts to accomplish the above and future directions for the work in progress.